EVANS, MARCUS LEGRAND

EVANS, MARCUS LEGRAND (1831–1862). Marcus Legrand Evans was born in Arkansas around 1831 to Lewis Evans and Elizabeth Palmer. On February 19, 1857, he married S. Maria White in Gonzales, Texas. By 1860 he was a lawyer and member of the Royal Arch Chapter of Masons. On September 12, 1861, he enlisted in Houston, Texas, as a captain into Company C, of the Eighth Texas Cavalry, known as Terry's Texas Rangers. He experienced a kidney problem in autumn of 1861 and was briefly furloughed in April 1862 due to the illness. He was promoted to major and again to lieutenant colonel by October 1862. First Sgt. Benjamin F. Batchelor of Company C made the statement that Evans personally "shot the soldier who killed [Col. Benjamin Franklin] Terry" at the skirmish at Woodsonville. Evans was shot in the head at the battle of Perryville on October 8, 1862, and left in Harrodsburg, Kentucky. He was captured by Union forces and died of his wounds on October 19, 1862. James K. Polk Blackburn characterized him as "quite a nice man and a gentleman of quiet and friendly disposition." He was buried in a Masonic lot at the Spring Hill Cemetery in Harrodsburg, Kentucky.